About 20 hypertension patients in Louisiana are living the future of health care, Bloomberg reports. When it’s time to take a medication, their Apple Watch taps their wrist and gives a visual display of the pill so they won’t confuse it with other meds.
The patients are taking part in a trial of the gadget through Ochsner Health System in New Orleans. German software maker SAP SE is also testing and deploying the device to see if its real-time notification functions increase employee punctuality at meetings and help close sales deals.
The Apple Watch, introduced earlier this year, has yet to become a mainstream hit. Corporate clients could be key to fueling its growth, just as they’ve been for Apple’s iPhone and iPad. The tech giant, which doesn’t break out watch sales, probably sold 4.5 million of the devices last quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. That’s tiny compared with the 48 million iPhones shipped in the period.
Business users accounted for just 2% of watch sales last quarter, according to Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. Apple is likely to focus more on enterprises in the next one to two years, he says. By 2017, businesses will represent 15% of sales, according to Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
At Ochsner, doctors just want their patients to feel better. While mobile prompts can be set on smartphones, people may not have them in hand or hear them ring, only to discover later that they missed a dose. That scenario is less likely to happen with a wearable gadget, says Richard Milani, a physician who is leading the Apple Watch trial with the hypertension patients.
“We thought the watch was unique in that it had durability,” Milani tells Bloomberg. Tools that help people remember to take medication or engage them in exercise “can have a positive effect on many things including blood pressure,” he says.
